


You Belong with Me

by screamlet



Category: Actor RPF, Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Based on a Taylor Swift Song, Inspired by Music, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-20
Updated: 2010-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/pseuds/screamlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slightly AU -- in which Pinto live the Taylor Swift dream, but with more awesome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Belong with Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [waldorph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph/gifts), [leupagus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/gifts).



> It's best if you find the music video for Taylor Swift's song "You Belong with Me".
> 
> [](http://archiveofourown.org/users/waldorph)waldorph is entirely to blame and [](http://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus)leupagus let this happen.

His sister is -- she's just fucking amazing. He knows this because, atheist that he is, he can't stop walking through his new apartment without saying, "Oh my God, Katie, oh my _God_" every five feet, marveling at this space that is all fucking _his_, and adjusting his glasses every few seconds because he maybe his stupid eyes are imagining this.

"Oh oh and look at all the _cabinet_ space," she says, and Chris looks and kind of can't help gasping and throwing an arm around her shoulders, and, yes, calling out to that housing deity that let his sister find this two bedroom, two bathroom, big kitchen, big living room apartment, the whole third story on a house in Silver Lake, and fuck he's only _twenty-four_ \-- he's either going to live here forever or never live anywhere this nice ever again.

"Okay, now bedroom number one!" Katie says. "Now, the set up of the bedrooms is weird --" she begins as Chris and their parents line up in the hallway, waiting to be admitted into the first bedroom. "The back bedroom is, technically, the master bedroom, and it's about two feet bigger in each direction, and layout wise, it _is_ the master bedroom."

"But…" his dad says.

"_But_," she says. "This first room is kind of too beautiful to not sleep in all the time."

She steps aside to lets Chris in first and fuck, he thinks, she's right.

The room is huge and white with stupidly tall ceilings, but that doesn't matter -- no, what matters is the far wall and how eighty percent of it is a window, a gorgeous, hunter green frame, letting in more natural light than he knows what to _do_ with but, really, he's a California kid, he needs it more than --

"Holy shit," Chris says. He runs to the window and throws his back to it, extending his arms wide in either direction to block the view from his parents.

"Chris, what is it?" his mom asks as they walk into the room.

"I think I'm about to meet my neighbor," Chris says. "Guys, don't look, I'll take care of this, okay?"

His parents, being awesome, take a few steps back and drag Katie with them. Chris turns around and looks out the window again. It looks straight into someone else's bedroom and, yeah, that's a guy on a bed getting head from another guy. Chris tries to ignore the fact that the guy _on_ the bed being blown is probably the most beautiful person he has _ever_ seen, all longish dark hair and sharp eyebrows and a flat stomach being appreciatively rubbed by whoever's on his knees in front of him. Chris swallows and knocks loudly on his window.

The guy takes a moment from leaning back and gripping at his bedspread to open his eyes, see Chris, and close his legs _on_ the other guy's head, which makes Chris laugh and wince all at once, especially when the guy tumbles off the bed and, yeah, their windows are too close for Chris not to see the struggle on the floor as pants are put on and a shirtless, platinum blond guy strolls out the bedroom door without a look back.

Chris watches the completely gorgeous dark-haired guy get up from the floor, give him a chagrined look, and then disappear for a minute. He comes back with a giant spiral pad and a marker, writes for a few moments on several sheets, and then walks up to his window.

_Hi! I'm Zach!_

_Welcome?!_

_I'll try to close my curtains._

Chris smiles at his window and waves, and then remembers his entire fucking _family_ behind him. He turns around and motions with his thumb over his shoulder.

"That's Zach," he says.

* * *

Chris moves everything in about a week later and, against his parents' mildly phrased objections, makes the huge windowed room the master bedroom and office. ("You know I really like natural light -- plus, it's just good manners if I give myself the slightly less desirable room, right?")

The first thing he does, of course, is get his sister to help him set up a curtain rod of almost inconceivable length, and then attach a heavy, opaque dark yellow/gold curtain to it.

Zach watches the proceedings and holds up a sign once it's set up.

_:(_

Chris gives him the finger and a smile, and then goes back to unpacking his stuff. He leaves the curtain open.

* * *

Later that night, when Chris is bringing the mountain of just-moved garbage down to the curb, Zach is outside waiting for him after the second trip. Their houses share a fence and Zach leans against it, his knees pressing against the low miscellaneous hedges on his side of the fence.

"So you took the apartment after all," Zach says. "I thought your parents would have dissuaded you after seeing my junk."

"They tried, but how often do you get a room with that kind of view?" Chris asks. "I'd take it over the Arno any day." He stands across from Zach and extends a hand. "I'm Chris."

"And I'm Zach," he replies. "If it makes them feel better, you can tell them that guy _is_ my boyfriend."

"Hmm, okay," Chris says as evenly as he can because, stupidly, it was crush at first sight and of course someone as hot as Zach is taken.

"Yeah, like, I'm twenty-six, so I thought I'd give this whole _monogamy_ thing a try for once. So, be relieved -- two months ago, you would have been lulled to sleep by the moans of the twink parade, but _now_, well."

"Now it's just the hushed tones of gentle, mature _lovemaking_," Chris says.

"Thanks, Chris, it's really nice to meet you and my stomach needed to be churned just then," Zach says with some genuine pain in his face. "And what about you? Did you know there's less than _ten feet_ between our windows?"

"Isn't that some kind of property violation or something?" Chris asks.

"Who gives a fuck? I just want to know what you're going to be hounding me with night after night. Please, be explicit."

"Um, well." Chris looks around, crosses his arms over his chest, and pushes his glasses up his nose. "Little awkward talking about this over a fence?"

"Way to invite yourself to dinner," Zach replies. "Come on, finish bringing your shit downstairs and we'll go get some falafel."

"Yessir," Chris says, and they grin at each other for a second before Chris bounds back into the house to gather up his wallet, cell phone, keys, cardigan, and the rest of his trash with too much glee.

* * *

"So what brings you to Silver Lake?" Zach asks. Zach forced Chris at metaphorical gunpoint to get the chicken with garlic paste and pita, while he went for the falafel and eggplant slathered in hummus, all shoved into a pita bursting at the seams with every vegetable imaginable. "You're good looking enough to be an actor if you lost the glasses -- you've got a total Clark Kent kind of thing going on. I have the same glasses, actually. They're all the rage among douchebags in our demographic."

"Uh," Chris says before he laughs and remembers how that aside started. "No, I'm not acting. I freelance and got a job teaching ESL with the LACCD to pay the bills on my _awesome_ new place." Chris crams a chunk of garlic-slathered pita into his mouth and motions at Zach with his chin. "You?"

"I act," Zach says. "So, great, we won't be competing for shit."

"When would we ever compete for anything?" Chris asks. "I just can't think -- well, okay, my dad's an actor and like, casting agents know what they want, and I can't think of a single one who'd say, 'Yeah, just find me someone hot, their build or coloring doesn't matter.'"

"You have a point -- we won't be competing for guys, then?" Zach raises an eyebrow slowly and Chris marvels at the kind of control he has over it. "Unless I've read you wrong…?"

"No, uh, you read me right," Chris says, looking down at his food for a few seconds. Suddenly the newness of everything gets a little dimmer -- for a few hours, he had really believed that he was on a whole new planet where the last year hadn't happened, Beau hadn't just kicked his ass out of their Berkeley apartment and shacked up with their old _poetry professor_, and --

"So now you're going to tell me why you zoned out," Zach interrupts. "Because that has 'big gay tragedy' written all over it, but it can't be a _huge_ gay tragedy because your family came with you to check out your new apartment, yet you're here in the middle of the summer when classes don't start for another six weeks."

"Yeah," Chris says.

"Recent, messy break up; you lost all your friends in the divorce, and your place; you crashed at your parents' until you found your new place, and now everything is going to get better, right?" Zach asks with careful consideration.

"He was our _poetry professor_," Chris moans dramatically. "Like, I think I'd be more upset if it was something more cliche like my best friend -- oh, wait, my boyfriend _was_ my best friend, way to go putting all my eggs in that basket."

"Ouch," Zach says.

"It was also college, though," Chris explains, "and how we were _that_ couple."

"Oh god, not _that_ couple," Zach sighs. "I hated that couple. I was never that couple. I want to knife you just for being part of _that_ couple."

"Sorry, but we were awesome," Chris says. "We threw the best parties --"

"Well, fuck that, I throw better ones," Zach asserts. "And now we can pool our resources. We'll put a plank between our windows and have double the space. Just think of it."

"That's the worst idea I've ever heard," Chris laughs, "which means that they can only get better from here."

"Awesome," Zach says. "I win by failing so hard. This is going to be awesome."

* * *

Chris meets The Boyfriend, Jonathan, when he's taking out the trash later that week. He drops the bag into a trash can and sees an obscenely red convertible pull up in front of Zach's house. A tall, thin, impeccably tailored blond man sits in the driver's seat and checks himself out briefly in the rearview mirror before taking out his phone. Chris is kind of mesmerized because he can see that the guy's suit was crafted by gods, and that someone that fastidious can only be a dick to someone like Zach, who takes nothing seriously. God, how fucking pissed must this guy have been to have his head clamped down between Zach's thighs and then wrestled to the floor?

"Chris!" Zach calls out as he jogs across the grass to where Chris continues to stand. "That's Jonathan."

"Do you want to introduce me?" Chris asks.

"He's… not good with people. But if you want… hold on." Zach digs in his pocket for his phone and rolls his eyes before answering it. "Sweetie, I'm right here."

"Oh, really," Jonathan replies dryly and loudly for being only 15 feet away. "Because I'm defining 'here' as 'in the seat next to me', and you seem to be defining it as 'by the fence with that'… is he a librarian? Something bookish where his expertise in deciphering small print is essential and yet, simultaneously, expendable."

Chris hears all of that, and gives Zach a sarcastic smile with one corner of his mouth.

Zach purses his lips and raises his eyebrows at Chris. "I'll be right there, baby," Zach says and hangs up. "So that's Jonathan."

"And this is the guy you decide to dabble in monogamy with?" Chris asks, forcing a smile onto his lips. "If you had just waited a few months --"

"Don't be a jerk," Zach laughs, and he leaves for the place next to Jonathan in the car and buckles up. While Zach adjusts himself, Jonathan looks over the brim of his sunglasses and sharply ticks an eyebrow up at Chris, clearly not impressed by Chris' jeans, plain white t-shirt, overgrown hair, sneakers, and faint acne scars. Oh, right, and the glasses are apparently a sign of something subhuman. Zach looks up again, gives Chris a tiny smile, and then looks over at Jonathan, who gives Zach the fakest of smiles before pulling out and driving away.

* * *

Chris keeps his curtains open a lot and he's pleasantly surprised that Zach does, too.

Most days it doesn't matter much, since Zach keeps long hours -- his room is empty when Chris wakes up and he gets home when Chris comes back to his computer after dinner.

_Lasagna!_ Chris proclaims one day on the sketch pad he keeps on a table by his window, because apparently the interwindow messages are A Thing now.

_Cheesesteaks :(_ Zach writes back. _Our star's favorite hangover food._

They mime vomit faces at each other for a few minutes and Chris pulls his headphones on, getting ready to buckle down and finish his magazine piece.

He forgets Zach is there until he takes a break to stretch and looks across the way. Zach is on his bed and looks away furtively, then looks back again. Zach picks up his pad and writes:

_You were singing along!!!_

Chris tries not to die of embarrassment, but stops blushing when Zach puts down his pad and just _looks_ at him, all warm brown eyes and a close-lipped smile that has Chris' spine ready to retire and become a liquid.

_Will sing for money!_ Chris writes on his pad after they've stopped ogling each other.

_NOVEL IDEA!_ Zach writes back as he laughs.

* * *

Chris isn't sure when he became Zach's girlfriend, but there isn't any other word for 'an unpaid person who helps choose another's outfits', even if it's from across the way in their separate rooms.

Anyway, Chris can barely dress himself in anything but primary colors, so he shrugs a little too much for Zach's liking. Zach sighs, grabs the big pad and marker, and scrawls viciously for a moment.

**   
  
_CASUALLY FANCY_   
  
**

Chris rolls his eyes and gives a compliant nod.

Chris edges his chair closer to his window because Zach is holding up two nearly identical pairs of pants. Chris stops himself mid shrug and mimes something like 'they are the _same pair of pants_, you fastidious bitch' across the window. Zach rolls his eyes and mimes that one pair is tighter and makes his ass look amazing, while the other is looser and hangs off his hips. Chris holds up two fingers to the window and Zach grins happily, because that was apparently the right answer.

When Zach pops into view again, he's wearing those admittedly boner-inducing pants and pulling a miniscule jacket on. Once it's on, he grabs his pad, scribbles a message, and waves it at Chris. _Put on a blazer and follow my car._

So Chris does and the whole evening is just one big ulcer in his heart or something that's actually medically possible. Jonathan's family apparently has _just opened_ this new gallery, so Jonathan takes Zach's elbow and leads him around from cluster to cluster of rich donors and a few celebrities, introducing him and making small talk, and Chris wants to drag Zach back to that shared space between their apartments where they talk with their notepads like dorks and ask, seriously, _why him_? Why not _Chris_?

Then Zach starts sending over the attractive men he's introduced to, and Chris looks over to see Zach waggling his eyebrows and doing obscene things with his tongue to the champagne flute he's holding. Chris laughs against his depression and tries to charm the best he can, but he's kind of failing at it.

"These people are so _earnest_," Zach whispers as he sidles up to Chris, having snuck away from Jonathan for a moment. "They really _like_ this shit on the walls, I mean, for fuck's sake, give me _Desperate Housewives_ any day."

"You do _not_ watch that shit," Chris replies, rolling his eyes so emphatically that he has to adjust his glasses.

"You're right, I'm on television, I don't actually have to watch it, or enjoy it, or --"

"Zach," Jonathan calls out, but he doesn't yell, of course, or raise his tone louder than polite art gallery conversation -- he just makes himself heard, somehow, like the chatter in the room knows to diminish at the sound of his money.

Not that Chris should be metaphorically throwing that in Jonathan's face since his parents aren't exactly not-rich either, but this is a whole other league of money -- a naturally platinum blond kind of money.

"You better answer when Draco Malfoy summons you," Chris says suddenly, adjusting his glasses innocuously.

Zach chokes on his champagne and spits most of it on Chris' shirt. He recovers from his coughing fit and tries to brush the champagne off Chris' chest and shoulder, but his hand suddenly becomes entangled with another hand -- Jonathan's.

"Zach, dear," Jonathan says and seriously, where did this guy come from? "Stop harassing your friend and let him find a bathroom, for God's sake." Jonathan looks at Chris and says with flat sincerity, "If you give Zach your blazer, I'll pay for the dry cleaning. You'll have it back in time for…"

Chris can see in Jonathan's face that moment in the middle of the sentence when he _stops caring_ about what he was saying, and looks back to Zach. "You have champagne on your lip," Jonathan mumbles, and leans in to kiss it away, of course, because Chris was apparently _made_ to tolerate this bullshit. He's not sure what either of them expected him to do but stand there and watch Jonathan's tongue dart out and carefully trace the contours of Zach's mouth. Jonathan, somehow, is hilariously discreet about it, and draws very little attention -- or maybe that's how much people in the room care about any of them.

"Come on, Zach," Jonathan says, and puts Zach's champagne flute on a passing tray. "There are people I'd like you to meet." Chris watches Zach be led away by the elbow and waits five more seconds (waits for an over-the-shoulder apologetic glance from Zach) before he leaves.

He dry cleans his own damn blazer.

* * *

"Okay, so here are the rules of karaoke," Zach says as they sit down at a table for two.

"Just us? Jonathan won't be joining us?" Chris asks.

"You can't sing along to Beethoven or whatever the fuck he listens to," Zach sighs. "Also, he has something tonight. Whatever. Anyway, my rules of karaoke -- ooh, wait!" He pulls a waiter aside and orders two Texas-sized margaritas, and then turns back to Chris, who is cleaning his glasses on his shirt. "That's rule one: margaritas only."

"You know, just because we're gay --"

"Shut up, even my straight friends agree to the margarita rule, and for fuck's sake, it's a _margarita_, not a fucking cosmo."

"Okay, so margaritas. Next rule?" Chris asks. He slips his glasses back on and surveys the room, not at all terrified at the turnout.

"Next rule is _no performing music that's actually good_," Zach says. "Unless it's spectacularly awesome, like… I don't know, any 80s power ballad. No, when you're at karaoke with me, you do _bad songs_ that will entertain, because karaoke isn't about you." Zach shoves a giant binder at Chris and says, "Now here's the book -- you go first because I say so."

Chris flips through the first pages for a few seconds before he suddenly realizes The Song that he needs to do, and it's such a bad idea but it's making him laugh way too hard, which is making Zach laugh hard, too.

"Okay, yes, that's a _good sign_ \-- tell me the song!" Zach says.

"Absolutely _not_," Chris says, shaking with laughter. "It's a surprise but believe me, you're going to love it."

"Oh God, okay, hand it in and let me get through most of my tequila first, please."

It's busy because this particular bar apparently only does a karaoke night monthly ("third Thursday, fourth Friday, I don't give a fuck, the point is it's _not often enough_," Zach says), so Zach is nearly through his second Texas-sized margarita when Chris bounces up on stage, orients himself, and begins performing the hell out of his fucking song. "I was so high I did not _recognize_ the fire burning in --," Chris croons.

"OH MY GOD," Zach cackles, and that's enough to draw the entire room's attention and get the laughs Chris was hoping for.

"This! Love! Has! Taken its toll on me!" and he sings right to Zach, because Zach is the only person in the room he knows and probably the person most actively chairdancing to the magic of Maroon 5.

So it's no surprise by the end, when the song is literally repeating itself, Chris is really earnest and looking only into Zach's face, trying to force his eyebrows into some kind of _no I'm totally kidding_ formation but he knows the rest of him kind of gives him away, probably, what with the way he pleads, "I have no choice, 'cause I won't say goodbye anymore," and maybe if he keeps repeating it (which, luckily, he _can_, because this song is nothing if not a sledgehammer to the forehead with its derivations), it'll really work.

Chris doesn't sit down right away when he gives back the microphone, but stands in front of Zach and grins. It's tense but fuck this boyband, that song was really catchy, and Zach looks kind of horrified, like --

Zach grabs a semi-empty Texas-sized glass and throws up into it (with surprising control and _oh fucking Jesus why is Chris not more disgusted_), then puts it back on the table.

"Bad tequila," Zach says. "Drive me home? I don't… feel okay."

"Yeah, tequila does that," Chris replies.

"Yeah, so. Drive me home."

Chris does, and Zach says he'll be fine, and they reach their respective bedrooms at the same time, but Zach pulls his curtain closed with only a quick glance at Chris that's more scared and sick than anything else.

Totally the tequila.

Right?

They don't talk about karaoke.

* * *

Chris is taking out his trash one night and sees Zach standing at Jonathan's car, talking to Jonathan, who won't even get out of the _car_.

"Oh look," Jonathan says, mostly with his eyebrows. "Maybe _he_ cares about your feelings. In any case, unattractive people are _so_ grateful for any attention they can get."

"Hey, Jon!" Chris says with a small wave of his hand. "Good to see you again! We should do lunch sometime!" He makes a small phone of his hand and mouths _call me_.

Chris strolls away from them and doesn't look back, but his stomach twists and turns and jumps and does all sorts of shit because --

No, it's stupid to think --

Chris is in his room when Zach returns to his bedroom. Chris swallows a lump that he hadn't noticed forming in his throat and looks across to catch Zach's eye. Zach stares at him for a moment and heads to the window, scribbling something on the pad for Chris.

_Fucked that up! Night._

Chris nods and Zach closes his curtain. Chris sighs and throws himself back on his bed. He flips onto his stomach, grabs his own pad, and writes _I LOVE YOU_ across a page. Chris stares at it for a moment, sighs deeply, and rolls onto his back again.

* * *

If things change with Jonathan out of the picture, Chris blames his (over)active imagination -- he knows Zach is attentive by nature and it's easy to confuse that with interest. Zach comes over to watch Chris' TV because that's what they do most nights now that they're both single, and if Zach stays past the ten o'clock news, it's to watch the late night shows.

Even if they usually end up talking through them.

That look Zach gets in his eyes when Chris begins cleaning up their popcorn and beers -- the way he shoots up to help and the way he looks at Chris when their hands brush together as they clean bowls --

It's a hallucination, not a delusion -- it's a symptom of Chris wanting him so badly he could scream. He wants to sit next to Zach on the couch without the safe six inches between their thighs and grab his hand whenever he damn well pleases, and maybe stretch out across the couch and pull Zach with him and finally feel the texture of Zach's hair.

Oh, right, and the part where he'd like to wake up with Zach right in front of him rather than staring into Zach's bedroom.

"Chris, hey," Zach interrupts. "You there?"

"Yeah," Chris says.

"I'm going home," Zach says slowly. "Thanks for having me over."

"Thanks for coming," he replies. "Tomorrow? More of the same?"

"Ah, no, actually," Zach says. "I have a thing. Bought a ticket to some fancy benefit thing at the aquarium." He groans and adds, "I think Jonathan might be there, actually." Zach walks over to Chris' door, a hand in his back pocket, and turns suddenly when he reaches it. He looks at Chris, then back at the floor, and seems almost -- it can't be _shyness_. "Wish you were coming, actually."

Zach closes the door behind him and Chris spends a little too long staring at it.

* * *

He helps Zach choose an outfit again and Zach leaves for the benefit, giving Chris one more lingering smile as a parting gift.

Chris stares blankly at his computer screen for about 40 seconds before he notices a press pass hanging from the corkboard just above his monitor.

He likes whales, and the _LA Daily News_' magazine probably needs a puff piece covering said whales. Even if they don't, he can certainly pretend they do for a night.

* * *

Chris hasn't worn his tux since his sister's wedding, but he remembers the photos and that he… didn't look too objectionable in them.

He put in contacts, too, so that's something.

As he walks into the main atrium, he sees Jonathan from the corner of his eye. Chris can _feel_ Jonathan's slimy eyes crawling all over him and giving him a few more seconds' consideration than he merited the other week. Chris keeps walking, hands in his pockets, eyes combing over the room looking for Zach --

Who is cutting through clumps of people with a champagne flute raised slightly, his eyes fixed on Chris and his mouth hanging open a little.

"Surprise tuxedo is a surprise," Zach says. He puts the champagne flute on a passing tray and grins at Chris. "So."

"So…"

Chris reaches into his inner pocket and pulls out a folded sheet of paper, the one he --

"Hey," Zach interrupts. He pats his own jacket and it crinkles with the sound of folded paper. "Me too."

Chris puts the paper away and lets Zach invade his personal space, cup his face in his hands and stare him down for a little too long before, _finally_, kissing him.


End file.
